The Tim Reaper

Over the years, I've posted quite a few Photoshopped images of myself that bear a striking resemblance to the Grim Reaper. Well, they bear a striking resemblance to what popular culture tells us the Grim Reaper looks like. After all, if you've seen the Grim Reaper, odds are you aren't here painting a picture of him.

If the truth were told, I don't really think the images I've posted are intended to be the Grim Reaper (more like the Tim Reaper). I just like the mysterious quality of them. So in that sense they are like the Grim Reaper. We are fascinated by the Grim Reaper. I don't think its that we are intrigued by death as much as we are intrigued by what comes after (if anything).

I know some people profess a firm belief that nothing happens. Or those with a religious bent attach a time of judgement to the after life. I think the righteous ones are engaged in wishful thinking. I believe all of the judgement is going on in this life. Hopefully after we die we leave all of that crap behind and get on with whatever we exist for.

I think it is the fascination with the afterlife that keeps crap shows like Ghost Adventurers in business. I confess to actually watching the show, more to have background noise on while I work on my computer than anything else.  And if you are lucky enough not to know anything about Ghost Adventurers, it is a reality show  featuring three self-styled paranormal investigators who lock themselves in old buildings that have a reputation for being haunted. I think the show host, Zack, is about as sharp as a river rock.

Zack is a muscle bound moron with a really bad haircut. He and his camera and sound guy walk around with night vision cameras and EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) recorders bumping into chairs and shouting for spirits to pinch and push them. Most of their evidence of the afterlife seems to be EVP that are unintelligible until Zack interprets them. Apparently most spirits have the enunciation skills of Sylvester Stallone playing Rocky.

Zack and his band of bozos also bring in experts to review their grainy footage. These experts generally resemble those fat Goth people who hung out in alleys back in high school smoking cirgarettes and plotting to overthrow student government. Zack also interviews witnesses who work in many of abandoned buildings he investigates. The witnesses are often night watchmen and caretakers who only recently been out of rehab.

If the garbage they uncover on Ghost Aventurers are truly examples of what happens after we die, I'd prefer the theory that we just end. Because mucking about in the basement of an abandoned hospital throwing pebbles at gibbering buffoons would get old for an eternity (though I wouldn't mind chucking rock at good ol' Zack's head). What would be the point? The cliche answer is that these are spirits caught between worlds because they have unfinished business, usually because they met a violent or untimely death. Tell me, what kind of unfinished business would you have in the crawlspace of an old speakeasy?

The other illogical thing about the whole ghost theory is the mathematics of it all. If dying an untimely death doomed you to hanging out where you died, the spirit world would resemble Disneyland on a weekend. Wars and natural disasters alone would keep packing the spirits in between worlds trying to figure out how to string words together in an EVP recording device.

I do hope there is something after we die. Science tells us that energy is neither created nor is it destroyed, so I'm hoping the means we continue. And I don't really want to be sucked back into the universal ether without awareness. I'm one of those selfish people who clings to his fantasy of being unique and individual even while being connected to the universe.

I guess I'll see eventually. I'm in no hurry though.